slamboard

There are web hosting services and there are Web Hosting Services. Network Solutions will have your site up 99.9% of the time and they offer to refund your money during the first month if you are not satisfied.

They are were one of the first web hosts on the scene. They registered with the BBB in 1999 and get a satisfactory rating. They spent a few years being criticized for exploiting what was being perceived as a virtual monopoly. Web Hosting is not a realm that lends itself to monopoly in the same way that something like PC operating does and it was in reality always a more or less level playing field. Network Solutions just had a really big head start on what would eventually qualify as the competition. Over the years, we have used several different hosts including Network Solutions. They deliver what they promise and you can be sure that they aren’t going to disappear overnight. The hosting packages offered by this company are on the high end with regard to price. The reality in the marketplace is that dozens of companies are competing to be the lowest price and as a result they cannot afford to offer much in the way of support and they are your worst nightmare when something goes wrong.

Kimkins is optimized for search engines. The SEP work was carried out before Heidi Diaz came clean about her actual weight. If you search the term Kimkins on Google, you will see Kimkins.com at the top of the search. Below the site description are seven links to pages within the site. One of them is the old Who is Kimmer page. On that page is the fraudulent after picture and also the 198 lb weight loss claim and the text of the old interview with Jimmy Moore. This page should be deleted. I have to wonder whether it had been left up on purpose.

Edit: The page no longer accessible.

Web development is a perfect fit with island economies. Caribwebdev.com has the goal of promoting and supporting Caribbean Web Development by providing tips, tutorials, hints and other resources.

I often see great businesses big and small that cater to tourism with the use of very badly designed websites. Anyone who can promote themselves as the best person for the job of bringing one of these businesses into the 21st century has the chance to get lots of word of mouth business if the have the skills and knowledge to impress clients.

One tip that everyone who builds sites in any capacity should head concerns browsers. You always need to test anything that you build in several different browsers. I always work in Firefox, but statistically over 80% of users still prefer IE. Actually, I think they just don’t know any better.

If you are a web developer on a small island you would do well to check the availability of some short catchy web addresses and register some good ones either for your own profitable use or to resell to clients. Registering domains is not a difficult process.

PPC Professional Steve Baker has a website that is devoted to helping people better understand how to run an effective adwords campaign. He has created a a comprehensive guide to . He guides you through the basics of keyword generation and grouping. He gives valuable advice about writing your text. He reveals some important details about creating a landing page that the Google will like. The thing that most novices are intimidated by is the bidding process. Obviously a campaign will usually have the goal of increasing your revenue so overbidding is asking for disappointment. Steve Baker has some great rules of thumb on how to start your bidding based on your goals and your budget. Adwords has built in tools to help you manage things. Steve points them out and explains them in language that a newcomer to the process can easily understand.

When you have adwords on the landing page associated with your ad campaign, your expenses will be offset by some increased revenue. If you look at the ads by Google that are on this page, you will probably see some that are relevant to the content of my site and some that are not as relevant. Some of the advertisers are getting a better return on their investment than others.

I have heard several different success stories relating to online marketing and I have noticed some recurring trends. Often there is an engaging personality who creates something in an online social setting to which other people ascribe a value. At first there may be an informal non-monetized way in which the supply and demand is met within the original social network. And then a voice says “You should have you own website and have an online store!”

This voice might be inside the creator’s head, or it might be a friend or a fan.

I have actually witnessed one instance where the person in question ignored that voice. If you have heard that voice but you are having trepidation, take some time to look at the ecommerce hosting and cheap business web hosting solutions offered by AQHost. They are a design and hosting service with packages ranging from an amazingly affordable starter pack right up to corporate hosting.

All packages include an easy to use control panel. When you get a business level, you do away with a few limitations that are inherent in the starter packages. You get an unlimited number of email accounts. You get an unlimited number of FTP accounts. You even get unlimited MySQL 4 Databases. Money making websites range from eStores that sell homemade jewelry to paid membership sites that sell ideas and insider information. A merchant account with AQHost will mean that you can accept credit card payment from major credit cards. I was not surprised to read that 85% of transactions online involve credit card payment. If you have a business model up and running that does not accept credit cards, you could expect at least a 40% increase in business from just that one change.

SaaS is a term that may be unfamiliar to many people reading this post. The concept of Software as a Service is a growing trend as developers are seeking business relationships as opposed to just sales.

ProActive Software is one of these software companies. They have some business management tools that are designed to assist a company executive with work flow management. Obviously, stellar customer service in this sector will earn word of mouth business and loyal customers. I was actually surprised to read that that typical response to a request or question is between 15 and 60 minutes. I perform some customer service on a daily basis and I have surprised some customers with 15 minute response. It is not what people expect these days. I manage that about 0.02% of the time. 24-48 hours is what I promise.

The core software products actually had their genesis as in house solutions to workflow management. I think that is cool. It seems like inspiration often comes more freely when you are solving you own problems.

There is nothing like walking out of a shop, satisfied with your purchase, product in hand knowing that you have a face behind the sale.

The Internet in some ways has taken that assurance away from the customer and with the masses of choice only a mouse click away the thought of purchasing a product or service online can be quite daunting.

However, the software as a service (SaaS) industry in New Zealand is fast moving from futuristic idea to current day reality and companies offering SaaS are looking for ways to maintain the personal service which has been a big part of historical software sales.
ProActive Software has found great and personal service to be a key part in their success on the global stage.

CEO Julian Stone says customers have said they’re surprised to get such personal service when dealing with ProActive.

He says “Don’t make sales, build relationships. This is a necessary part of the SaaS business model. Look after your customers as they are the foundation of the business. It’s important to keep customers happy month after month to retain their business.”

Customers of their core product www.proworkflow.com, have told Stone that their dealings with people at other software companies, often based in the US, have been rude, lacked callbacks, with slow email responses, making many customers wary of using SaaS where they had little ability to have personal contact with their supplier.

However, Stone says when customers come across a company with good service, they tell people.

Stone has attributed ProActive’s excellent response time with sales and support enquiries to their customers satisfaction. When customers build their business on our servers and use our code they must know we will be there if something needs attention.

An average enquiry for ProActive, from point of contact, to response is typically 15-60 minutes, where most of ProActive’s customers had said average response times for other software companies was usually measured in days, not minutes or hours.

“If you want to make a sale, sell a good product. If you want to grow a business, sell good service. We’ve found that most referral sales now come in as a result of ProActive Software’s service,” Stone says.

As Stone says “ProActive have built their SaaS company they have always kept service as a top priority, knowing their focus would continually be tested and be drawn onto product development and administration.

ProActive Software knows it is extremely important to keep the level of service constant and high “Customers don’t care that we have ten times as many customer to look after, they don’t care we are on someone else’s problem, they want the high service level maintained - so as we grow we automate, simplify, and when necessary bring in additional resource a bit before it is really needed. It takes a while to build a reputation of not letting down customers, it does not take anywhere near as long to lose it,” Stone Says

These days, lots of us have a number of websites to host, and yet we aren’t ready for the complication, expense, and well, expense of a dedicated server. My wife and I ran into this issue a couple of years ago, and we decided that the solution is to get a virtual private server.

With Virtual Private Servers, you have total root access so that you can control your server when and how you want — no more begging tech support to make changes on your single-domain accounts. A virtual private server is also much cheaper than individual accounts for each domain — a Network Solutions virtual private server, for example, can let you host your sites for as little as $1 per domain per month.

What is a virtual private server, you may ask? A VPS uses what is called virtualization software that partitions a single server into a number of virtual servers. Each virtual server can run its own software and can be independently rebooted. This way you get all the control of having your own dedicated server, but you share the cost of that server with a number of other people.

J.D. Power and Associates have recognized the superior customer service of Network Solutions. Depending on what host service you are fleeing, you may not know what superior customer service looks like.

Finding the best web hosting is not an easy task.

Top 10 Web Hosting can help you compare a number of popular hosts on one easy to read chart. The number of hosts is, obviously TEN. I recently reviewed a different web host review site and some familiar hosts show up on both lists. Top 10 Web Hosting seems to have a few also rans thrown into the mix. These hosts that are not familiar to me may be really good, they certainly stack up against the best as far as features and services and prices as listed. If you see a host that appeals to you on one ranking site, it is your best interests to check them out thoroughly before committing. One thing that I noticed is that the top rated host is highly recommended based on their quality customer support. I agree with placing a high priority on this aspect. It doesn’t matter how nearly perfection a host can be, if the customer service sucks, you will hate your host the first time you have a problem. Quickly resolving a few problems per year is better than having one problem at some point that does not get resolved quickly.

I am not even going to try to work out how many different hosts are used by my household and our business. It’s not a crazy number, but we really have never hit upon a host that is so good that we say to ourselves that we have to move everything there. If you are trying to decide which host to move to or which host to use for a new project, the Web hosting reviews at WebHostsReport.com could prove to be a valuable resource.

I am glad to see that a host that we use for many of our important projects is at the top of the list. I think you really have to look at all the hosts that are given a passing grade and see which one is a good fit for you. One tricky issue is that some hosts are very dependable but if you are one of the unlucky few that runs into a problem, they have very frustrating customer service.

If you are a blogger, it might interest you to know that WebHostsReport.com has a monthly draw in which it awards a blogger who wrote about their site 6 months of free hosting.

The reviews that I read on WebHostsReport.com were very in depth, with the reviewer actually obtaining hosting for themselves and describing ease of use and whether they felt they were being upsold.

Another feature on WebHostsReport.com is a user rank leaderboard. The ranking doesn’t quite match the table for the highest rated hosts from reviews. I think a dissatisfied customer is more likely to go to the effort of voting that a satisfied one. The reviewers give GoDaddy a grade of A- and it the fourth ranked based on reviews. On the user voted ranking, GoDaddy is in ninth place.

I think the Internet Consulting business has changed a lot over the years. I have only become tangentially involved with web development very recently and I hear about a wide range of customers in terms of expectations and programming and design knowledge. It must have been easier in some ways a decade ago when a web designer could safely assume that their customer knew nothing and that they would be amazed by whatever rudimentary functions could be installed on a site back then. Nowadays, many customers have actually built a website or two all by themselves. These customers know that a full blown eCommerce site with all the modern bells and whistles is beyond their own capabilities, but they also know how to look at code and they are not impressed easily.

The Internet Consulting firm that you can find at http://www.teraeon.com is flexible enough to jump in and help a client with one small aspect of a development project or they can tackle the creation of an eStore or any other type of site from scratch. The list of coding languages that they work with is impressive and exhaustive. ASP.Net, ASP, PHP, JSP, C#, Java, Visual Basic, Perl, XML, DHTML, Javascript … that seems like just about all of the useful languages for web development. I am proud to say that I have heard of every one of them and I would even recognize two or three of them if they fell on me.

I was browsing through their portfolio and I found a really cool Interactive Workstation Design Tool™ on an office furniture website. I do not know if Teraeon created this application. Even if they did not, it is still a case where an eCommerce site has been outfitted with a cool application that no doubt separates the business from its competition. I guess I can also mention that this application caught my attention and drew me in to this site. I had to stop writing this post and email the link to a friend.